Brooklyn's Finest Review

Is this cop drama righter -- or wronger?

In the opening scene of director Antoine Fuqua's new cop saga Brooklyn's Finest, Vincent D'Onofrio, in a suitably grimy cameo as a wasted drug dealer, lays out the theme of the film: There is no right and wrong -- just righter and wronger, he tells Ethan Hawke's dirty cop Sal. In other words, people can do the right things for the wrong reasons, or they can do the wrong things for the right reasons. Then he serves as the first example of this very notion, much to his character's eternal dismay.

It's an engrossing scene, at once thoughtful and tension building as the viewer just knows that this little two-way conversation in a car in the middle of nowhere is going to end badly for one of the participants. And that's the general feel evoked by the entire film, one of constant pressure as the stakes continue to rise for each of the three main characters, but also one of sympathy as you wonder how they managed to screw up their lives so badly.

Richard Gere's Eddie is one of the other members of this triumvirate of blue, a veteran on the force who's just a week away from retirement. Prone to guzzling whiskey in the morning, and putting an unloaded gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger, Eddie is clearly a mess. Mocked by his fellow officers, he's just biding his time until he can get out; he's less interested in stopping crime on his beat than simply ignoring it, and when he's paired with an idealistic young cop the kid can't understand Eddie's malaise.

Richard Gere and Ethan Hawke play cops treading the line between right and wrong in Brooklyn's Finest.

Don Cheadle is Tango, the third character in the group. He's gone deep undercover and has successfully infiltrated the highest echelons of a drug operation, but along the way he's almost completely lost himself to this alternate persona. His wife wants a divorce and his best friend is the boss of the drug ring (Wesley Snipes, getting a chance at making real movies again after years of direct-to-video dreck), who his superiors (including a beautifully rough around the edges and aged Ellen Barkin) want him to sell out.

None of these three characters ever really meet on screen, though they do kind of cross paths in a Crash sort of way. But this isn't Crash, thankfully, and the self-importance and operatic ridiculousness of that film isn't really Fuqua's bag. No, the director is more interested in the harsh and sometimes bloody path that justice -- and too often, the lack of justice -- takes on the streets.

The ever reliable, ever put-upon Lili Taylor plays Hawke's wife, and what little screen time she has is put to good use, helping to flesh out Sal's drive to steal money from the drug dens that he busts as we learn that the cash-strapped cop has about a half-dozen mouths to feed at home. The interplay between Hawke and Taylor works very nicely, but this aspect of the script ultimately feels forced. Not only is Hawke a family man but his wife is pregnant. With twins. And she's got really bad asthma. And their house is infested with mold, putting his wife and the babies in danger. Get the point? He needs money.

The writing, by former transit worker Michael C. Martin, lapses into cliche more often than one would hope. And the finale of the film veers dangerously into over the top theatrics that sort of tie the three characters' storylines together, tragically for the most part.

Click above to watch our video interview with the cast of Brooklyn's Finest.

But generally Hawke's character reminds the viewer of his turn in Fuqua's Training Day from nine years ago. There he played Jake -- a young, relatively idealistic up and comer opposite an Oscar-winning Denzel Washington's corrupt veteran. It's not that tough to think of Sal as Jake a decade later, a little bit wiser, a little bit more worn down by the system.

Gere's performance is about as understated as it gets, but his best scenes are the ones he shares with the prostitute (Shannon Kane) he regularly visits. There's something more there than just a business relationship, but when even a hint of healthy emotion or normalcy bubbles to the surface the two characters don't know how to deal with it. Meanwhile, Cheadle's gradual realization that his life has become more about being a criminal than a cop works mostly because of the actor's slow-burn performance.

Brooklyn's Finest doesn't go in for action movie fads, but there's more than enough gunplay for those looking for that kind of thing. Ultimately, the film is more inclined to look to the cop dramas of the '70s for its inspiration, pouring on all the quasi-realism and downbeat inclinations that films of that era thrived on. It's a style that suits Fuqua and his actors.